David Reed Delivers the Goods Again

(. . . unto the Energy and Commerce Committee.  Following are links to
a note on David's blog, his testimony, and to video of the hearing
itself that hopefully will become live again.  I only intercepted the
notice I had of this in the wee hours of the day of the hearing,
yesterday, so had no time to announce it.  I have not watched the
hearing, but David's text is a wonder of lucidity, presenting a
picture of the technical aspects that provide for "net neutrality" and
illuminating very nicely where and why policy would impact it.  I
understand the House Members responded very well, and Markey
apparently ended with a rather potent comment noting that the reason
for the American Revolution was largely because the British thought
they could just invade people's houses (!).

I have often noted that the moment the neutrality of the Internet was
assured, for decades hence, was in 1977, in the hallways of the
conference in Marina del Rey, California that Vint Cerf oversaw to
develop Bob Kahn's plan for "TCP".  Four people, Danny Cohen, Steve
Crocker, David Reed, and John Schoch, argued on diverse bases for
separating the original plan for TCP into two layers: a pure datagram
lower layer called IP, and two protocols above, TCP and UDP.  David
Reed made his case on the basis of the generality of this platform for
the full diversity of protocol behaviors it would make possible, and
-- however much that particular point might have gained sway at that
moment -- this is the key point that expresses the essential nature of
the platform.  This design essentially made the flexibility of the
network "the stakes" from that very moment on. [See
http://www.nethistory.info/Archives/tcpiptalk.html for details] --
Seth)